Police State dismays students at April 28 Board meeting... Overcrowding classes at Robeson High School belies 'Culture of Calm' propaganda
April 28, 2010 was supposed to be a lesson in civic engagement for 12 Robeson High School students who used their day off school to attend the Chicago Board of Education meeting. Instead, it became a lesson in how the Board is more concerned with bureaucracy than listening to the public. Board of Education security staff and Chicago police were on orders to treat students, teachers and parents as if they were an enemy invading the Board's land. Substance reporters counted at least 20 security people between the elevators on the fifth floor (where the Board meets) and the various spots in the Board chambers.
[img=1553]This reporter came early to the board meeting to sign up to speak, but the other students from Robeson were coming to attend the press conference and Board meeting. Because of this, they were segregated into the “overflow” room on the 15th floor (where they are supposed to watch the Board meeting on closed circuit TV) while in the fifth floor room where the Board was actually meeting, there were rows and rows of seats “reserved” for guest speakers who left shortly after they spoke.
When it came time for me to speak, my students who wanted to face the Board were told that only five of them could stand with me, and when five came down, a “Facilitator” in a white jacket actually pushed a student out of the way so she could shut the door to the Board room.
The Board’s draconian security tactics in the board room show taught the students, again, how students from magnet and selective enrollment schools were allowed to stand before the Board in full force, but a group of 12 students from Robeson weren’t even allowed to enter the chambers when their teacher was speaking.
Ironically enough, I was speaking this day of the Culture of Calm program that we are developing at Robeson and how all attempts to create a Culture of Calm would be sabotaged by raising class sizes.
At Robeson, students last year (2008 - 2009) were assigned classes without teachers, as was reported by WBEZ, because the Board would not release extra positions to our school until they counted us, even though our staff was well aware that the closing of Calumet High School (which is now Perspectives charter school, which does not take the city's most challenging students or which kicks them out if they misbehave) and the "turn around" of Harper High School (which dumped more than 100 of its most challenging students in the opening year of "turnaround") were going to cause our student numbers to jump.
This year (2009 - 2010), the central office analyzed our predicted numbers with us, supposedly to avoid this situation in the future. The CPS representative told our administration that our Advanced Placement (AP) calculus teacher was really only .7 of a teacher — because her class sizes were "too small." Of course, the AP program mandates smaller class sizes to make sure their program is effective. To give our AP teachers more students would require us to drop our AP programs, which are mandated for us to increase because we are a school on probation. Catch-22!
After CPS analysis, we still had over 80 students in each gym teacher's’ section and even freshman Algebra classes with 52 students. All students in attendance at the April 28, 2010, Board meeting had experienced class sizes over 45 in core subjects during the 2009 - 2010 school year, when Ron Huberman was completely in charge as CEO of the school system. Many students (and parents!) have expressed internalization the difficulty of learning in classes with 50 students — blaming their classmates or themselves for not performing well in crowded classrooms.
Instead of following the AP model that students learn most effectively with smaller classes, the Ron Huberman has gone on record many times threatening to open the Chicago Teachers’ Union contract to raise class sizes. He throws up his hands in desperation, as if there is no other choice. At the same time, there is money locked away in other contracts, such as the unwieldy and difficult IMPACT attendance system or the IDS scripted curriculum program that takes all professionalism away from the craft of teaching. Why is the CTU contract the only mentioned in the discussion of reopening contracts?
While discussing raising class sizes, Mr. Huberman is also attempting to implement what he has proclaimed to be a 'Culture of Calm' in many schools that have been identified as at-risk, ours included.
Our first Culture of Calm liaison, Mr. Chika Okafor, was infrequently seen in the building, arrived late to meetings, and couldn’t even organize an effective meeting with clear objectives and processes to get there, skills that teachers are required to put in every single day’s lesson plans. He is salaried at $80,000 a year, fresh out of college, for this duty.
When it was realized that the program wouldn’t develop itself as the brunt of responsibility fell on overburdened teachers, Ms. Cherie Russ-Chester. Ms. Russ-Chester has organized several meetings that were more efficient, though it seems as if all the teachers are requested to do is theorize ideas based off the six "pillars" of Culture of Calm.
Student participation is sporadic, and no effort is made to get student buy-in to the planning process. Nothing yet has come to fruition.
A Robeson administrator explained to me this morning that CPS wants to see results from their Culture of Calm “investment” next year. Culture of Calm is a program that demands change of the entire community, she explained. Typically, changes take three years — a first year of finding your legs, a second year of working out the kinks, and a third year of finally implementing a polished process.
Instead, the business model of CPS expects Robeson teachers to add “Reforming the Englewood Community in 6 months” to their ever-increasing workload!
Why is the idea of re-allocating Culture of Calm money into keeping class sizes down not an option? Not even Huberman could implement a Culture of Calm with 50 freshmen in a math class over the course of 6 months.
Opening the CTU contract sabotages the Culture of Calm program, which already has bare-bones support. Schools systems are living organisms, interacting with themselves! Can you cut someone’s toes off then ask them to pirouette? Or even walk a straight line? CPS refuses to see the school system as a holistic organization.
My students began to see our struggle in the bigger picture at the Board meeting. Some noted that the security at central office was horrible compared to security in their own building, who so often get a bad rap in the media. The strongest lesson they learned was that students, teachers, and community members are not respected by the Board, and that organized action must be taken to make positive changes in the system for students. Perhaps this is better than any lesson I was intending to teach!
